I agree that a topic with such an inflamatory word in it and a thread with a lot of trashing of companies will soon be deleted by Renderosity. I also have written a very devastating response to some of the European whining in this thread. I won't post it here. write to me if you want to read it. john@jrdonohue.com ::::: Opera :::::

gaz, Would you be willing to report out the render time for those two images, including size and resolution of the output image, and your rig specifications? The jpg posted is downloaded at 875 x 656 at 72 dpi. :::: Opera ::::

Watch our for copyright violations as it used to be that some or all of Kozoburo's hair is "for non-commercial use only." However, I just downloaded one set and the readme says: "This Poser hair is free to use without restrictions in your (personal or commercial) renderings . but...Please do not redistribute the files or a part of the file." This has renewed my interest in Koz for hair. ::::: Opera :::::

Dale that is astounding, priceless information. Yikes and thank you. I am going to take your advice wholesale concerning naming of drives and will install Partition Magic. The equiv does exist in the mac world. Hope you don't mind me contacting you when it is time to really assemble things, for closer questions. What do you mean by "Internet Apps?" I already follow that philosophy about nothing on C: but the OS, if possible, and carry the same convention on Mac. I wish Apple would ship the G5 with a small small footprint 20GB or so drive for the OS and leave its two bays open for the 250GB SATA drives so you could do RAID etc. internal with the OS safely on its own drive. They insist on putting a pedestrian 80GB in one bay. You can't buy a G5 without it. I have three underutilized Macs. I'm hoping the Vue4Pro renderfarm implementation for OSX is excellent. That way, life will be easy...the complex stuff on the G5 and the messy stuff on my stand-alone P4 PC. If the cross-platform scheme really does work, I can add two or more low-cost PCs as cows, and expect very little from them except to be cows. Cows is cows. ::::: Opera :::::

Couldn't find any V3 elbow morph, free or not free. ::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: http://jjkirnan.com/nearlysleeptime.jpg

It's not hard to manipulate her in Post for a static image, but I want to animate her. Her arms and elbows can NOT look like the above image.

Is Stephanie Petite plagued with the same problem?

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aka j.j.kirnan

You have no idea how much I am already counting on the point, maxx, for my project! Th stop frame(s) with a close up has to be killer, but characters in motion...less stress shall be applied. It is beginning to look like I will have a budget of 2-4 min per frame. ::::: Opera :::::

dale, 16 hrs for 300 frames of 648x486. is that 16 hrs for EACH cow, or cummulatvie 16 hrs adding up all cow duration? the difference is 3.2 min per frame vs 16 min per frame. ::::: Opera :::::

Dale, thank you for the REALLY valuable information. It is so great to have these pioneers who are out there ahead of you contributing the wisdom which almost certainly was developed by grief! I hope I can pay it forward with my own gained wisdom with this project. Can't discuss content at this time, but will be able to show results afterwards. ::::: Opera :::::

Orio, Thanks for answering in detail. I am leaning towards Vue4Pro at this time. I intend to be executing on a five node renderfarm. However, I don't know my seconds-per-frame budget yet, and I may have to add some nodes. I am leaning to 4pro because apparently the advanced users in the Vue community have developed tricks with 4 to emulate advanced lighting and other photo-realistic qualities. I also sense that 4Pro has been in use for a while whereas 5Esprit is so new it is likely in the "users are completing the shakedown" period! What I might do at this point is focus on producing the animation itself and render a small format version, perhaps 480 x 270 or even a little smaller. This will buy me time with the client. Then, when 5Pro comes out and gets stable, I will upgrade and re-render at DVD highest quality taking advantage of some of the radiosity features here and there for critical scenes. I can't discuss the content of this project ahead of time, but I will be able to show results afterwards. ::::: Opera :::::

Thanks for those two insights. I am following up looking into Rodluc's item. Orio, may I ask you to elaborate just a little bit more? Are you against radiosity function in animation because of the render time? You think it does not do any good or improve appearance? Or? Also, leaving radiosity aside, can you briefly give the other reasons you recommend 4Pro over 5? Thank you, ::::: Opera :::::

dlk30341, Thank you for your reply. I want to ask a more complex question about Vue4Pro vs Vue5, but will do so in a new thread. ::::: Opera :::::

Dale, Thank you for taking the time to give such a careful reply. 3) Dale said: "Nope [I can't have two cows on one computer]. But both the Cows and VuePro are multiprocessor aware, so they would use multiple threads in the rendering. The way the HyperVue network render system works, the actual Vue application functions as the controller. It handles file transmission, scene set-up and frame specifics. When it is doing this, it can't render, so you need a Cow on the controller system. I haven't tried to run multiple Cows on one system, but i suspect things are coded so that only one can run within an OS environment at a time. I could be wrong, but I doubt it...." So, my two dual processor Macs can NOT process two different frames at the same time, but since VUE/Mover is multprocessor aware, they will be efficient (fast) at processing the one frame they are rendering at a given time. Is that accurate? I am glad to hear I can go cross-platform. I think I will leave one computer completely off farm production, for surfing, emailing, Posering, modeling etc. I guess one of the three would be the controller and also render as a cow, right, and the other two just be nice contented cows? I just realized I have a functioning Mac 7200 accellerated to G3, I wonder if I could get milk outta that old thing. So, if you had the following three computers on a farm, which one would you run as the master? Mac G5 Dual 1.8MHz 2.5/GIG/RAM 250GB/SATA/HD+80GB/HD Mac G4 Dual 400MHz 1/GIG/RAM 80GB/HD PC Athlon2800 1/GB/RAM 80GB/HD Again, thanks for your reply ::::: Opera :::::

I could not find the prices on the site, nor info if available in U.S. I also can't figure out if they are placing markers on the actors. 8 markers only, that's attractive low price, that's attractive. I sent them an email, see if they respond. ::::: Opera :::::

dr geep: I'm going to partially take back my statement in my previous post. I can't find one tool the does exactly what you are looking for in Canvas, acting like out-spreading water from one pixel color. Canvas has a tool, called the blur tool. You can set the pixel diameter affected by selecting a 'brush' size, you can call 'pressure' into play if you have a pressure sensitive imput device. If you hold down the mouse, the tool will continue to 'blur', in place, over time, until you let go or it reaches a user-controled 'fade diameter'. I looks like water spreading, but does not spread the color of one pixel outwards. I use it as a 'traveling anti-alias tool' by blowing up to as much as 3200% and dragging/painting along the interface between two contrasting boundaries. It melts them together beautifully. ::::: Opera :::::